John Singer Sargent, His Portrait [Hardcover]

Stanley Olson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1986

REVIEW: "This exemplary biography is manifestly fascinating." (Baltimore Sun)REVIEW: "[Olson has produced] an absorbing, detailed, comprehensive biography of this intriguing enigma of a man." (Library Journal)REVIEW: "Olson`s prose is a rich, almost Jamesian affair, ferociously literate, archly elliptical." (The New York Times)REVIEW: "Stanley Olson has written a superb account." (San Francisco Chronicle)REVIEW: "John Singer Sargent is one heck of a good book. Read it." (The Washington Times Magazine)REVIEW: "This biography conveys vividly and with considerable charm and wit a sense of the social world of the distinguished American portrait painter." (The Virginia Quarterly Review)REVIEW: "This biography rescues Sargent....from the shadows of his famous subjects." (United Press International)AUTHORBIO: STANLEY OLSON, like Sargent, was an American expatriate; born in 1947 in Ohio, he lived in London from 1969 until his untimely death, from a stroke, in 1989. Scholar, writer, dandy, aesthete, gourmet, and impeccable host, he was a much-loved and admired member of London`s literary world. He authored Elinor Wylie: A Life Apart and edited the abridged Harold Nicolson: Diaries & Letters 1930-1964.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Like a suave butler polishing the egos of his wealthy patrons and sitters, Sargent turned out 700 portraits varying greatly in quality, notes Olson. Tired of the tedium of portraiture, he longed to do still lifes and outdoor scenes but got sidetracked into painting huge, mediocre murals that mischanneled his talents. This startling, unconventional view of the chronicler of the Edwardian Age emerges from Olson's richly detailed, thoroughly researched biography. The son of a willful, hypochondriac mother and a taciturn, pessimistic father, Sargent became a workaholic, an outsider, a born observer eager for fame but let down by it. Henry James cleared a path for Sargent to settle in London when he tired of Paris, and the painter's friend Monet taught him to work outdoors on a "floating studio," but through it all Sargent remained strangely elusive, a loner, unfulfilled in his role. Olson (Elinor Wylie: A Life Apart follows Sargent on his jaunts to Morocco and Venice and shows how a short burst of communal life in the Cotswolds art colony pushed him closer to arch-heretic Whistler. Photos.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Internationally known for his portraits of the rich, the royal, and the famous, expatriate American artist John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) was a workaholic with a prodigious output of some 700 portraits and 2550 watercolors and murals in Boston and Harvard. Olson claims he has the advantage here as a team of scholars has taken over the preparation of a separate catalogue raisonne, leaving him free to concentrate on Sargent's life. And concentrate he does, producing an absorbing, detailed, comprensive biography of this intriguing enigma of a man. Photographs plus a genealogy and the painter's own description of his Boston Public Library decorations are included in the text. A fine biographyand at a price even public libraries can afford. Gloria K. Rensch, formerly with Vigo Cty. P.L., Terre Haute, Ind.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 309 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1st U.S. edition (1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312444567
• ISBN-13: 978-0312444563
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,230,505 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Sargent biography, October 19, 2007

By 

Peter McReynolds (California U S) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: John Singer Sargent: His Portrait (Paperback)

About 6 by 9 inches. 280 pages. Footnoted. Approximately 50 illustrations, all B&W. With an extensive notes section. Two appendices; one for Sargent's family genealogy, another for a description in Sargent's own words of his Boston murals project. 1986. St. Martin's Press.
In Olson's view, Sargent biography occurred in three main phases. Immediately after Sargent's death, his friend, Evan Charteris, wrote the first biography. In the `50s, Charles Merrill Mount wrote the second. After another thirty years, Olson wrote this third, his own biography of Sargent. I've read this last first and plan to read the earlier ones next. This perhaps odd reverse order to ensure that I have the bare facts quite straight from the beginning, because although Charteris personally knew Sargent and his book is affectionate, Sargent's sisters complained that the correct facts were not always there in that first book. But with the facts now straight, the earlier biographies can be read more for perhaps additional color. And of course the idea of only three real biographies of Sargent is inaccurate. For example, Patricia Hills' biography came out the same year as Olson's.
Why read a complete Sargent biography? Most of his life, at least the broad facts, is there in condensed form in the many available books on his art. His work is seldom discussed in a vacuum. Along with reproductions and discussion about them, there's, "Born 1856 in Florence, Italy to inveterate expatriate parents..." One good reason is to learn more details, to see not just the walls but the bricks in the wall. Olson's book is quite informative. Of particular interest to an artist, for example, is Sargent's sympathetic advice to his artist friend, Paul Helleu. Once entering Helleu's studio and finding him in despair amidst discarded sketches and pastels, Sargent assured Helleu that he thought them just fine and expressed a desire to buy one. When Helleu countered that all that was well and good but the works were not what he had intended, Sargent replied that such was always the case. As if artist may propose, but paper or canvas disposes. From Sargent this is quite curious. Frequently accused of almost unnatural (and somehow un-artistic) technical facility, one would think that Sargent before anyone would be able to routinely produce precisely what he intended a priori. Was he telling his truth or merely solacing a good friend? This is of real interest to the rest of us, who now and then might produce some good work... but largely by accident.
Another reason to read this biography is Olson's fine, even entertaining and witty way of writing. We read that Sargent's parents, interviewing potential wet nurses, learn a quintessential Italian fact, why tell the truth when a perfectly good lie will do. The breast feeding candidate, first deposed and denied, returned again another day for a second shot with new costume, dyed hair and an assumed name. Perhaps maddeningly painful lactic tension was her impetus. It certainly could not have been the Anglo American food. Such is the charm of Italy. I truly love it.
Still another benefit is access to Olson's reasoned opinions. For example, Sargent's almost blank personal /sex life. Opinions on this vary considerably. The fact that Sargent left no public trail in this regard, leads me, despite any suspicions, to respect his privacy. Olson argues from the same common material that there is no evidence that he was homosexual or not. Other writers, as near as I can understand them, argue oddly that Sargent's evident artistic inclinations must imply that he was homosexual? As if anyone familiar with magenta and mauve must be homosexual? From the top of my head ... magenta is a redder violet, mauve more blue. Original mauve was a coal tar derivative dye discovered early in the 19th Century. It proved extremely popular for women's clothing and for a season or two was the signature color of the ladies of Queen Victoria's court. Mauve was also the surname of a Belgian artist who briefly taught Vincent van Gogh?
As an aside, Olson plausibly argues that "John Singer Sargent" is an error. Sargent is never known to refer to himself as such. A signature of "John S. Sargent" is as formal as he got. However, in this day of the Internet, searching "John Singer Sargent" unfailingly leads to the correct sites. In contrast, searching "John S Sargent" often does, but also often does not, leading instead to various other "John S Sargent"s, ward politicos, advertising dentists, soccer players, who knows what. Alas, Olson will never be aware of this counter argument to "John S Sargent", he died much too young at 42 shortly after completing this most excellent book. Nor shall we benefit from more good writing by Olson, an American with a University of London PhD in literature.
In sum, I unreservedly recommend reading Stanley Olson's biography of Sargent. But, I'd read it right next to a large book of decent Sargent color reproductions.

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting book, October 4, 2006

By 

C. Hurwitz (Asia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: John Singer Sargent: His Portrait (Paperback)

I really enjoyed the book. He was an interesting character who seemed to be liked by everyone and didn't take himself too seriously. My only complaint: for a book about a painter the figures are of poor quality.